Hbomberguy’s jump into comics chronicles the rise of history’s dumbest villain

polygon.com:

If I say the word “Luddite,” you’re probably imagining someone who stubbornly refuses to get a smartphone. That’s what came to my mind, at least, until I took a peep at these first five pages of Harry “Hbomberguy” Brewis and Skutch’s short comic for Failure to Launch: A Tour of Ill-Fated Futures.

Failure to Launch is the newest crowdfunded anthology from Iron Circus Comics, featuring over 300 pages of short comics from dozens of creators, including Ryan North, Blue Delliquanti, and Evan Dahm, all telling “tales of what could have been, but wasn’t: planned utopias in space, wild inventions, attempts to improve society, robot pets, and predictions of armageddon.”

In Brewis and Skutch’s short, “The First Union,” they relate the historical story of the Luddites, one of earliest trade unions of the industrial era, and their (literally) legendary leader Ned Ludd. Ludd was a figure the Luddites adopted half as a joke — and that the titans of England’s textile factories adopted as their ultimate villain. History was written by the victors, and today his name is synonymous with bullheaded and shortsighted refusal to embrace the new and innovative.

“We end up with the idea some weirdos decided technology was evil and started hitting it with sticks,” Brewis, who penned the short comic, told Polygon via email, “which is so comically absurd this mental image becomes an easy comparison to use against criticism — If you think it’s ‘bad’ we stole millions of artists’ work and fed it into our computer so it can spit out art similar to theirs on command, you are a crazy person who is against progress, just like those guys.”

“‘Those guys,’” said Brewis, “were relatively educated people for their time who, correctly, saw the end of their